One Book One Community is pleased to announce the author and book for the 2026 campus read. Jonathan Mooney's book Normal Sucks: How to Live, Learn, and Thrive, Outside the Lines is this year's campus read. He will be visiting campus on Sept. 29 and 30. The author keynote will be on Sept. 29 at 6 p.m. in the Union theatre (ARKU 424) with refreshments served before and a book signing after.

Copies of the book are available from the U of A library in paperback, ebook and audiobook. There will be book giveaways leading up the the author visit.

This quote from his website* summarizes his book:

"Confessional and often hilarious, in Normal Sucks a neuro-diverse writer, advocate and father meditates on his life, offering the radical message that we should stop trying to fix people and start empowering them to succeed.

Jonathan Mooney blends anecdote, expertise and memoir to present a new mode of thinking about how we live and learn—individually, uniquely and with advantages and upshots to every type of brain and body. As a neuro-diverse kid diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD who didn't learn to read until he was 12, the realization that he wasn't the problem—the system and the concept of normal were—saved Mooney's life and fundamentally changed his outlook. Here he explores the toll that being not normal takes on kids and adults when they're trapped in environments that label them, shame them and tell them, even in subtle ways, that they are the problem. But, he argues, if we can reorient the ways in which we think about diversity, abilities and disabilities, we can start a revolution.

A highly sought after public speaker, Mooney has been inspiring audiences with his story and his message for nearly two decades. Now he's ready to share what he's learned from parents, educators, researchers and kids in a book that is as much a survival guide as it is a call to action. Whip-smart, insightful, and utterly inspiring—and movingly framed as a letter to his own young sons, as they work to find their ways in the world—this book will upend what we call normal and empower us all."

*https://www.jonathanmooney.com/books